The paper presents first empirical evidence on the effect of foreign ownership on the union wage premium. Using matched employer-employee data for Denmark, the positive effect of plant-level unionisation on wages is found to vanish in foreign-owned firm. While the estimation establishes a positive wage effect of foreign ownership of between two and four per cent for workers employed in non-unionised firms, the foreign ownership premium is close to zero for workers in highly unionised enterprises. This result might help to understand why trade unions frequently resist foreign take-overs even though the existence of a positive foreign ownership wage premium is widely acknowledged in the literature.

Filer i denne post: 1

This paper investigates the empirical consequences for the relationship between skill upgrading and internationalization by decomposing import after country-of-origin and after the end-use of products. I find that the break-down after country-of-origin is of crucial importance, implying that international trade with low-wage countries leads to comprehensive skill upgrading, whereas international trade with high-wage countries leads to skill downgrading in Danish Manufacturing. The empirical literature on skill-upgrading and internationalization has mainly focused on international outsourcing and has to a large extent disregarded import penetration. By splitting import after country-of-origin, this reintroduces import penetration as an important explanation for skill upgrading. skill upgrading, import, country-of-origin, end-use of products

Filer i denne post: 1

We study the social interaction of non-smokers and smokers as a sequential game, incorporating insights from social psychology and experimental economics into an economic model. Social norms a®ect human behavior such that non-smokers do not ask smokers to stop smoking and stay with them, even though disutility from smoking exceeds utility from social interaction. Overall, smoking is unduly often accepted when accommodating smoking is the social norm. The introduction of smoking and non-smoking areas does not overcome this speci¯c ine±ciency. We conclude that smoking bans may represent a required (second-best) policy. smoking policy, health, social norms, guilt aversion, social interaction

Under existing welfare arrangements, an increase in life expectancy may pose a serious threat to fiscal sustainability, and it may have dramatic effects on the intergenerational distribution of welfare. This paper finds that such effects may be countered through a policy which links the retirement age to changes in life expectancy. Fiscal Policy, Longevity Adjustment, Ageing, Pensions,Welfare Reform.

Filer i denne post: 1

To examine the effects on labor market performance of government tax and enforcement policies, this paper develops an equilibrium model featuring tax evasion, matching frictions, and worker-firm wage bargains. In the wage bargains, workers and firms can agree on the amount of remuneration that should not be reported to the tax authorities. We find that increased taxation actually reduces unemployment, whereas more zealous enforcement has the opposite effect.

Filer i denne post: 1

Empirical evidence reveals that unemployment tends to increase property
crime but that it has no effect on violent crime. To explain these facts, we examine a model of criminal gangs and suggest that there is a substitution effect between property crime and violent crime at work. In the model, non-monetary valuation of gang membership is private knowledge. Thus the leaders face a trade-off between less crime per member in large gangs and more crime per member in small gangs. Unemployment increases the relative attractiveness of large and less violent gangs engaging more in property crime. Violence, Crime, Gangs, Unemployment, Identity

While immigration is unlikely to affect the employment of native workers in the long run, employment of immigrants may be associated with significant short-run adjustment costs for native workers as they have to fi nd alternative employment or are temporarily pushed into unemployment. In this paper, we therefore study the impact of immigrants at the workplace on the employment of native co-workers using a rich matched worker-fi rm data set for Denmark. Estimation of a single risk duration model for job spells of native workers shows that job separation rates increase if more immigrants are hired, especially when it comes to immigrants from Eastern Europe and less developed countries (LDCs). Furthermore, in a competing risks duration model, we fi nd that while immigrants from LDCs increase the unemployment risk for native workers, immigrants from Eastern Europe instead increase the job change probability of native workers. Thus, adjustment costs for native workers are more likely in the case where LDC immigrants are hired. Finally, we fi nd that the results only apply for low-skilled native workers.